Police found crucial clues by talking with witnesses and getting surveillance video from the scene of the homicide that allowed them to identify Christopher Ali Johnson as one of the people involved in the homicide of Garcia, 27, court documents reveal.

Gunshots ring out

The investigation began at 6:42 p.m. May 2, when a city police officer in the area of the 500 block of West Clarke Avenue heard 20 to 30 gunshots. Officers responded to the area of South Belvidere Avenue and West King Street, and they found a crowd forming and signs of a shooting, police wrote in court documents.

At 7:04 p.m., 22 minutes after the officer heard the gunshots ring out, police officers were sent to the 200 block of West Hope Avenue, for the report of a shooting. There, police found Garcia dead in the front passenger seat of a car and Jose Antonio Rosado-Baez, 23, the driver of the vehicle, outside the vehicle with injuries to the left side of his body.

Rosado-Baez was taken to York Hospital for treatment of his injuries, and he was later released. An autopsy on Garcia found he died from multiple gunshot wounds.

Police recovered "numerous casings" from the area of Mott Avenue in the area of South Belvidere Avenue and West King Street, including .40-caliber rounds and 7.62 x 39 mm rounds, which are used in AK-47s, among other firearms, police wrote in court documents.

Witness accounts lead to vehicle

Christopher Johnson, 14, is charged with homicide.(Photo: Submitted)

When police were able to speak with Rosado-Baez, he told them that Garcia had asked him for a ride. They stopped at a red light on Belvidere Avenue at King Street, and were behind two other cars when Rosado-Baez heard gunshots being fired and hitting his vehicle, police said. When the shots stopped, the two cars in front of Rosado-Baez didn't move, so he drove around them and drove to the parking lot on the 200 block of West Hope Avenue, where police responded for the shooting.

Police spoke to a witness who lives in the area and was on their front porch at the time of the shooting. The witness said they saw a black vehicle with dark window tinting driving south on South Belvidere Avenue turn quickly onto Mott Avenue, where it stopped and the front and rear passengers got out of the car holding guns. The front passenger was described as a young, tall, thin black man wearing a black hoodie with white and gray on the hood, and the rear passenger was described as a young black male, "a little thicker than the front passenger," and wearing a black hoodie.

The witness told police the thinner of the two started firing a pistol toward Belvidere Avenue while the other "squatted down and began firing a long gun in the same direction," police wrote in the arrest affidavit. When they stopped shooting, the got back in the car and it drove away.

Map of locations (story continues below):

Police got surveillance video footage from the area and observed the dark vehicle following Rosado-Baez's vehicle south on Belvidere Avenue. Police got a partial license plate number and were able to trace the vehicle, a 2019 Ford Taurus, to a car rental business. Police identified the person who rented the vehicle, whom they call Witness #2 or W-2 in court documents.

That person spoke with detectives, and said they rented the car "to trade (to Johnson) for a sum of drugs," according to the arrest affidavit. They also told police the Facebook name "ChikkenGang Fredo" belonged to Johnson, and they gave police Johnson's cellphone number. The witness told police that on the night Garcia was killed, Johnson asked to exchange the Ford Taurus for the witness' personal vehicle.

Police spoke with another witness, whom they refer to in court documents as Witness #3. That person told police they had rented several vehicles for Johnson in the past, and that on May 1, the day before Garcia was killed, Witness #2 and Witness #3 agreed to rent a vehicle for Johnson. "The agreement was a vehicle for exchange of drugs and money," police wrote in the arrest affidavit.

The two witnesses drove Johnson in their personal vehicle to the rental business in York County, when Johnson saw the Ford Taurus and wanted to rent that vehicle "because it resembled a police vehicle," police said.

After they rented the vehicle, the witnesses drove with Johnson to a gas station a short distance away and gave it to Johnson. He "was excited about the rental and drove off," police said.

What happened before and after the shooting

Police state in the arrest affidavit that sometime between the evening of May 1 and the early afternoon of May 2, Johnson took the rented Ford Taurus to a tint shop in York and had tint put on the windows.

Between 7 and 8 p.m. on May 2, not long after Garcia was shot and killed, Johnson called Witness #3 and said he wanted to meet up and exchange the Ford Taurus for Witness #3's personal vehicle, according to the arrest affidavit. When Witness #3 met with Johnson, he was with three other men, and they were all wearing hoodies. Johnson's hoodie had a white and gray design on the hood, the witness told police.

Johnson left in the witness' personal vehicle, but called the witness a few hours later, around 11 p.m., and wanted the Ford Taurus back. So they met again and exchanged vehicles.

The next day, Friday, May 3, Johnson called Witness #3 and said he wanted the witness to take him to the Ford Taurus, which was parked in a residential area. The witness picked Johnson up, they got the Ford Taurus, and returned to the tint shop where Johnson had the tint removed from the car's windows, according to the arrest affidavit.

They left the Ford Taurus parked at the shop.

Johnson told Witness #3 about the shooting, saying "some serious s--- went down last night," and "someone was killed," police wrote in the arrest affidavit. Johnson also told the witness, "I could get in some serious trouble."

When Johnson and Witness #3 went to the shop on Saturday to get the Ford Taurus, they learned the vehicle had been towed by police. Johnson, according to the arrest affidavit, told Witness #3 to "keep his mouth shut," and that he should clear all the conversations he'd had with Johnson from his phone.

Witness #3 told police he knew Johnson had been living in multiple residences, and had access to weapons including AK, 9 mm, 380 revolvers and an Uzi with an extended clip/magazine, police wrote in the arrest affidavit.